Items filtered by date: 04 December 2018

US: Lehigh Cement has applied to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to expand the quarry at its Nazareth cement plant. It wants to increase its mining area by a third to 112 hectares from 84 hectares according to the Express-Times newspaper. A public consultation period on the application will run until late December 2018.

India: Oman’s Raysut Cement plans to invest around US$700m in India by 2022. Joey Ghose, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company, said that about US$200m has been set aside to buy majority stakes in two local producers in early 2019, according to the Hindu newspaper. Raysut Cement wants to increase its total cement production capacity to 20Mt/yr. The investment will be funded by internal revenue and loans.

The cement producer is holding talks with companies in Chhattisgarh and the coastal region of Gujarat respectively. Each company has a production capacity of around 1.2Mt/yr. Raysut Cement also intends to invest up to US$500m in these companies following their acquisition by 2022, bringing their capacity up to 5Mt/yr.

Outside of India, Raysut Cement also says it is interested in buying a 70% stake in Kenya’s ARM Cement for US$100m. It is also in discussions to acquire buy cement producers in Uganda and Djibouti. It currently has projects in development in Somaliland and Somalia. The company also holds a majority stake in Pioneer Cement Industries Georgia.

Saudi Arabia/Yemen: Southern Province Cement has signed a deal to sell 20,000t of cement to Yemen. The deal will last for three months. It started in early December 2018 with the export of a 7000t consignment. It follows a similar agreement that Tabuk Cement agreed in late November 2018 to export products to Yemen.

Spain: Jesús Ortiz, the president of Oficemen the Spanish cement association, forecasts that exports of cement will drop by 20% year-on-year in 2019. He has blamed the situation on high electricity prices, according to the El Economista newspaper. He predicts that the local industry will have a capacity utilisation rate of 53% in 2019. He added that residential house construction was growing, but that the share of non-residential building had fallen.

Paraguay: A fault in a storage silo has spilled around 250t of cement at Industria Nacional del Cemento’s (INC) plant. The silo was reportedly closed for maintenance at the time, according to the ABC – Paraguay newspaper. The material is unrecoverable and its value was around US$0.1m. The mistake follows similar spills at other silos at the state-owned plant. Other maintenance issues have also been reported at the site.

UK: Finland’s Metso has acquired Kiln Flame Systems (KFS), a UK-based combustion solutions and technology provide, to extend its pyro-processing portfolio and capabilities. KFS specialises in rotary kiln and calcining processes, combustion optimisation and burner technologies with patented designs. It provides solutions to a wide range of industries including minerals processing. KFS has 14 employees based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. KFS will become part of Metso's Minerals Services business area, which offers a comprehensive line of pyro processing equipment.

"Joining forces with Metso gives us the opportunity to offer our technology to a wider customer base. KFS has worked hard to establish our position and reputation as a market leader in custom-designed combustion solutions, and we are delighted to build our future and continue serving existing and new customers with Metso," said Cliff Rennie, director and chief executive officer (CEO) of KFS.

KFS was founded in 1999. It uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for burner design and system analysis supported by physical modelling.